Liverpool draw at the Eastlands

21022010

The first half in a highly anticipated battle for fourth place was as scrappy as Scooby Doo’s sidekick with Liverpool responsible for most of the scrappiness.

Torres was on the bench for Liverpool while Ryan Babel made a rare start after greatly impressing in the lackluster win against Unirea midweek. Tevez was not available for the blue half of Manchester but they did start Adebayor who is always a dangerous predator.

The only notable action of the half was the sight of Fernando Torres warming up on the sidelines. The first half ended with Liverpool failing to come close to converting any of the half a dozen or so corners that were awarded to them.

The second half was full of incident. First Babel got a knock on his head from a wayward freekick, quite early in the half. Then both teams consistently played a game of “give the ball away to the opposition in embarrassing ways”, Adebayor had an amazing chance that was thumped away by Pepe Reina. Benayoun was soon introduced into the fray after recovering fully from a broken rib.

With 70 minutes gone, the match was balanced with neither team getting the breakthrough. This had to be quite frustrating for Liverpool who have underachieved all season and a draw here wouldn’t alleviate the situation at all as that would push them further away from the coveted fourth place.

The match certainly picked up tempo unseen in the first half as it drew to a close and Liverpool would count themselves lucky for not conceding a penalty for a blatant push by Agger on Adebayor in the box. Aquilani made his way onto the field with the hope of putting in a killer pass.

A long period of stoppage time beckoned as Skrtel continued to play Liverpool’s hero with heroic tackle after tackle. The final whistle resulted in disappointment for both teams but more so for Liverpool as it would put their fourth place chance in rather harsh perspective.